


The Chapter In Your Life Entitled San Francisco

by fengirl88



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Beat Generation, Crossdressing, First Time, Humour, M/M, Queer History, Recruitment, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, San Francisco, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-11
Updated: 2012-07-11
Packaged: 2017-11-09 12:38:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 19,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fengirl88/pseuds/fengirl88
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles and Erik's recruiting trip leads them to San Francisco and the counter-culture of the Beat Generation.  But who is the mysterious mutant they've come to find, and why is it proving so hard to track him down?  The answer will change their relationship in ways neither of them had anticipated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Some Like It Hot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hazelnut917](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=hazelnut917).



> The title comes from the song of the same name by [The Lucksmiths](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZj6er51KTU).
> 
> Huge thanks to hazelnut917 for her lovely prompt and art - see her art masterpost [here](http://hazelnut917.livejournal.com/1608.html).
> 
> Heartfelt thanks also to c_gracewood, kalypso_v and second_skin for beta brilliance and to thimpressionist for cheerleading.
> 
> Links to recordings of songs and more information appear in the notes at the end of the story.
> 
>  

Afterwards, Charles can pinpoint the exact moment he realized he was in trouble. 

Lincoln, Nebraska: past midnight, and he's lying awake in the top bunk of the sleeping-car roomette on the California Zephyr. He's starting to wonder if Erik intends to go to bed at all, or whether he'll get out at every stop and pace the platform the way he is now, smoking yet another cigarette, as the porters wrestle with heavy luggage and more sleepy Midwestern travellers board the train.

It's been ten hours since they left Chicago, but the memory of their abrasive encounter with the cigar-smoking mutant in the bar still stings. _A simple “No” would have sufficed_ , Charles thinks huffily, and then laughs in spite of himself at the absurdity of his prim reaction to the wild man's “Go fuck yourself”. Erik had taken it much better, even though he was clearly disappointed – well, _of course_ he'd be interested in a mutant with metal welded to his skeleton. From what Charles had glimpsed of the wild man's thoughts, the feeling was mutual... 

The train pulls out of the station, jolting his thoughts back to the present.

“How was Lincoln?” he asks, as Erik comes back in and shrugs off his jacket.

“Much the same as all the other stations,” Erik says drily. “Good to get out and stretch my legs, though.”

Charles averts his gaze as Erik begins to undress. The roomette's considerably smaller than even the cheapest of the motel rooms they've shared on the trip, and they're going to be shut up here together for two long nights. Next time they have to cross the continent, Charles is going to insist on air travel and to hell with the scenery, even if it does mean staying another day before they can get a flight. It's his own fault for wanting to leave Chicago as quickly as possible after that encounter in the bar, he knows, but that doesn't make it any better.

It's awkward, lying here staring at the ceiling while Erik gets ready for bed, and Charles tries to distract himself by compiling a mental list of films with great train sequences. _The Lady Vanishes_ is almost too easy, because that's practically the whole film. _The 39 Steps_ , Robert Donat hanging off the Forth Bridge. _Strangers On A Train_ , with Guy and Bruno joking about doing each other's murders and getting away with it. _The Lady Eve_ , Barbara Stanwyck putting Henry Fonda through the wedding night from hell as she reveals her colourful past. _Some Like It Hot_ , that wild party with the women's orchestra in their pyjamas, mixing illicit cocktails in hot-water-bottles. Marilyn Monroe attacking a lump of ice in the washbasin and lamenting her weakness for no-good saxophonists; Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in drag, on the run from Chicago gangsters after the St Valentine's Day massacre. 

Thinking of _Some Like It Hot_ makes him smile, remembering that image of Erik in drag he'd projected to the young woman called Angel in the strip club. He doesn't think Erik suspected what she was laughing at, and Charles certainly isn't about to tell him. 

_You've never looked more beautiful, darling_. 

He smirks at the thought of Erik in that terrible ginger wig and turquoise dress, Erik's long legs in black stockings and high black suede boots –

 _Fuck._

Seriously, the idea of Erik in that ridiculous get-up should _not_ be erotic. 

But he's caught in the trap of his own imagination, getting hard at the thought of pushing his hands up under the hem of the dress, feeling the warm bare skin above the stocking-tops, pressing his palm against the bulge of Erik's cock as it nestles in silk knickers trimmed with lace...

He's put a bit too much thought into this, hasn't he? For something that was supposed to be a joke in the first place.

The imagined sensation of cupping and stroking that hardening warm mass through the silk makes him groan. He's so hard himself that it _hurts_ , and his palms are sweating. 

“You OK?” Erik asks from the lower bunk.

 _Shit_.

“Bad oyster,” Charles says, clutching at the first excuse he can think of. “Think I'd better – um–”

He really hasn't thought this through at all. There's no way he can get down from his bunk without climbing past Erik, and there's no way Erik can miss seeing the state he's in. The tent in Charles's pyjama trousers feels as if you could hold a revival meeting in it. _Not helping_. Think of something else, quick.

“Do you want me to go on top?” Erik asks.

 _Fuck_.

“In case you, ah, need to get out quickly,” Erik says tactfully.

Right. Of course. He's offering to swap bunks, he's not – Of course he wouldn't be. Charles must be losing his mind.

“Thanks,” Charles says. “That's – yes, thank you, Erik.”

“Don't give it a thought,” Erik says. 

Charles can't work out if Erik's tone is faintly ironic, or if he's just imagining that.

Erik gets out of his bunk and turns away to pour himself a glass of water. Charles scrambles gratefully down the ladder and dives into the lower bunk.

“OK?” Erik asks, not looking round.

“Yes,” Charles says. “Thanks.”

He takes a deep breath of relief, only to realize he's not OK at all. Because the pillow smells of Erik and the scent is making his mouth water. He bites his lip.

“They keep these cars too warm,” Erik says. “Dries you out.”

He puts the glass back on the railed shelf above the washbasin and swarms up into the top bunk. For a moment Charles could have sworn that... no, it's impossible. There's no reason _Erik_ would be aroused.

That's one hell of a package he's got there, though.

Charles buries his face in the pillow to stifle a moan, inhales another lungful of Erik and pounds his fist against the wall in frustration.

Erik clears his throat, as if he's about to say something, but nothing comes. The silence is like a weight, pressing Charles into the thin mattress. It wouldn't take much for him to come like this, face down, breathing Erik's scent, pressing against the mattress and imagining Erik underneath him. He forces himself to lie still, trying to will his stubborn erection away. 

He's just about to tumble into sleep when a thought jerks him awake. 

He didn't _have_ the oysters. Erik did.

Someone up there must really hate Charles Xavier, Charles thinks morosely, listening to Erik's deep, even breathing as the train speeds on into the night.


	2. Strangers On A Train

The rear observation car is quiet, this time of night. There's no-one around but a very drunk businessman, who keeps trying to tell Erik a complicated story about his wife and an insurance salesman. Erik wishes Charles was here to shut the bore up, but since he isn't there's nothing to do but put up with it. He lets the flow of chatter wash over him – it's not as if the man wants him to _say_ anything – and stares out of the window at the dark landscape rushing past, the occasional lights of distant towns or stations they don't stop at, breaking the monotony of the journey even if not of the drunk's conversation.

Seriously, Erik is never travelling this way again. Screw the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains and the desert and the canyons. It's not just the boredom – it's being cooped up with Charles Xavier for three days and two nights in the smallest space they've ever had to share. At least in the daytime Charles wanders up and down the train being gregarious or exclaiming at the scenery. The nights are the real problem, in ways Erik hadn't expected at all. 

He knows there's no point in trying to sleep for hours yet, and he doesn't want to lie awake the way he did last night. He's going to drink one Gibson after another, till his eyelids are drooping, then stumble back to the roomette, clamber into his bunk and fall into sleep like a stone.

Last night he lay awake for hours, pretending to be asleep already but actually too tense to drop off, listening to Charles tossing and turning and groaning in the bottom bunk. Anyone hearing that would have thought that Charles was – no, really, that would be absurd. Erik's had occasion to complain before now that Charles has no sense of boundaries, but even he wouldn't be doing _that_ , not with Erik lying a few feet above his head.

That _bad oyster_ story didn't make sense, though. Erik had almost challenged him about that, but he really isn't sure he wants to know. It's hard enough trying to keep his own thoughts to himself without dealing with whatever's going on in Charles Xavier's twisted brain.

Living at such close quarters with a telepath, even one who promised not to read his mind without permission, is more of a strain than Erik could possibly have imagined. It doesn't help that his own brain seems hell-bent on coming up with the most inappropriate and embarrassing thoughts, the ones he'd be mortified to think Charles could hear.

Wondering what Charles thinks about when he masturbates, for example. Now there's a line of enquiry he _really_ shouldn't allow himself to pursue. But once the question presents itself – as it did last night, hearing Charles sigh and groan and pound the wall and thrash around – it proves astonishingly persistent.

He wonders if Charles ever goes with women who are telepathic too, like that bitch of a diamond-hard blonde who'd made Erik feel as if his brain was being sliced in two. She'd be a match for Charles all right. But maybe Charles doesn't want that. Maybe he actually likes them dumb and subservient and merely human, improbable as it seems. The thought of that power differential turns Erik's stomach – too much like what happened with Shaw. But he'd seen Charles going to Moira MacTaggert's room at the CIA base. “Going to make a cup of tea”, indeed – he'd never heard sex called _that_ before. And what else would Charles have gone for, if not for sex?

Has Charles ever been with a man, he wonders, even a non-mutant? He looks as if he might, but that sort of public-school-and-Oxford manner can be misleading, as Erik's found to his cost before now. When they'd first connected, in the water, the intensity had felt like encountering a lover. He'd thought that might still be where they were heading, the morning after that night at the base. The way Charles had lit up, seeing him there... 

But the nights on the road told another story. Charles was distant, polite, kept himself to himself and obviously expected Erik to do the same. There'd been moments when Erik thought his first guess was right after all – the teasing look in Charles's eyes, joking in the strip club with Angel, or the flash of something that seemed almost like jealousy after their encounter with Mr Go Fuck Yourself. Nothing happened, though, and clearly nothing is going to.

Which is why Erik is here in the observation car, being bored to death and drinking himself into oblivion.

“Buy you a drink, mister?”

Erik looks up in surprise – a glamorous unaccompanied blonde in a beautifully tailored suit is the last thing he expects to see in the observation car this late at night, and she's obviously not talking to the drunk businessman...

“I make it a rule never to accept drinks from strangers,” he says lightly.

“Anne Catterall,” the woman says, putting her hand out for him to shake.

Erik takes it, rather gingerly, and bows over it. He's not sure where _that_ came from – a forgotten injunction of his childhood, perhaps. 

“Erik Lehnsherr,” he says.

“So now we're acquainted,” the woman says, “how about that drink?”

“I believe I've had enough,” Erik says, which is true. “But I'm happy to keep you company if you're having one.”

The blonde pouts, disappointed, but orders a martini, fumbling in her black velvet billfold as she pays for it. Erik wonders if he was supposed to offer to buy her a drink instead. But even as a distraction – and he can see she's every inch of that – she hardly interests him. Charles would be in his element here, it's a pity he's missing this –

“Erik, _here_ you are. Oh,” Charles says, registering the blonde and turning on the charm, “good evening. Charles Xavier.”

“Anne Catterall,” the woman says, not sounding charmed at all.

Erik manages not to laugh, but it is funny. Charles looks as if he's sat down on a chair that isn't there, and the blonde woman looks as if she's just bitten into a lemon by mistake. The conversation that follows is as awkward a three-way as Erik can remember having for, oh, _years_ , probably not helped by his own struggle to keep a straight face. 

Charles asks Anne if she travels this route often, which somehow manages to sound as if he thinks she's some sort of high-class prostitute or a bored housewife looking for kicks. 

“I haven't been to San Francisco for over twenty years,” Anne says flatly. 

There may well be a story behind that, but she gives the impression she'd cut you in two if you tried to find out what it is. 

Erik wonders if he'll ever understand American women. This one's certainly giving off very mixed signals. The high-gloss bourgeois surface doesn't seem to fit with picking up strange men for sex – trying to pick up one strange man, at any rate – and there's an edge even to the flirtation that makes him vaguely uncomfortable. The woman is distinctly frosty to Charles, but keeps making what sound like innuendoes at Erik, which Erik deflects, politely but firmly, with relentless literalism. Eventually she gives up and says she's going to bed, _alone_.

Charles is obviously about to say something _everyone's_ going to regret in the morning (his pick-up lines are so terrible that Erik wonders how he ever gets laid at all), but just as he's opening his mouth to speak, the ice-bucket goes flying off the bar, spilling a shower of ice-cubes into Charles's lap.

Charles jumps up, swearing (his vocabulary is wider than Erik realized), and Anne bursts out laughing, a proper unaffected belly-laugh that gets Erik as close to liking her as he's ever going to be.

“Train must have hit a bump,” Erik says, all innocence.

Charles is still swearing and mopping his trousers with a handful of cocktail napkins as Anne says “Goodnight, Mr Lehnsherr, goodnight, Mr Xavier.”

“It's _Professor_ Xavier,” Erik says mischievously. 

He winks at Anne, and then wonders if that was a really bad idea. But she seems to take it in the spirit it was meant, as a conspiracy against Charles rather than a come-on. She winks back, and walks jauntily out of the observation car, looking fifteen years younger. Erik can almost imagine her as a kid, playing pranks on her brothers and getting into mischief. How she ended up like this, wearing that suit like a uniform, is anybody's guess.

Erik looks uncertainly at Charles, who has finally stopped mopping and swearing. 

“ _Hit a bump?_ ” Charles says, raising his eyebrows.

“Mm,” Erik says. “Rocks on the line or something.”

“ _Right_ ,” Charles says. He starts laughing, and Erik finds he's laughing too, partly out of relief, a welcome respite from the strain of the last day and a half.

“Did you _have_ to chuck a bucketful of ice into my lap?” Charles asks plaintively.

“You seemed as if you might need cooling down,” Erik says, because he can't resist it.

“Fuck off,” Charles says. It sounds surprisingly good-natured.

“Time for bed,” Erik says, looking at his watch, though he can feel the position of the hands. The looking's just a habit, left over from the years of passing for human. 

Charles doesn't move.

“Are you staying here for a bit?” Erik asks.

“I think so,” Charles says. “I feel like another drink.”

“Tell the barman to hold the ice this time,” Erik says, and winks at him. “'Night, Charles.”

“Goodnight, Erik,” Charles says. “I'll try not to wake you.” 

“Don't worry,” Erik says. “You won't.”

He can feel the heaviness of too many drinks seeping into his bones as he lurches back along the corridor to their bedroom. He doesn't look back at Charles but he can feel Charles's stillness, the unmoving coordinates of his watch, his belt buckle, the coins in his pocket. He wonders how long Charles will go on sitting there, staring at the dark landscape or the bottles behind the bar. Wonders whether another glamorous woman will wander into the observation car and whether Charles will have better luck this time. Wonders what he thought he was _doing_ , winking at Charles like that... 

But he's too heavy-eyed and fuzzy to wonder for long, and he's asleep almost as soon as his head touches the pillow.

It's not until he wakes up with the worst hangover he's had for a while that he realizes he must have got into the wrong bunk, gone back to the one he started the journey in without thinking about it. Charles is sitting on the top bunk, fully clothed, reading a science journal and looking very stern.

“Oh, you've finally woken up, have you?” he says. “That's good. You've missed breakfast, of course, but I imagine you'll at least want to shave before we get there.”

Erik's not sure he can speak yet, but he mumbles something that's meant to be an apology.

“I had breakfast with Anne,” Charles says airily. “She asked me to give you her phone number in San Francisco, in case you're at a loose end.”

Erik swears, then clutches his head, groaning, because the effort of swearing makes it feel as if it might fall off. Why he ever agreed to this stupid trip in the first place he'll never know.


	3. Foggy Day

The coordinates from Cerebro put the mutant they’re looking for somewhere in the North Beach area. Not that there _is_ a beach here, not any more. It’s the bohemian quarter, full of beatniks and poets and musicians and the ones who’d like to think that’s what they are but are mostly full-time drunks or drug addicts. 

Hudson Villa is hardly luxurious, as guest-houses go, but the young Englishwoman who's running the place seems friendly. And at least he and Erik will have separate rooms. Charles breathes a sigh of relief he tells himself is _absolutely_ not mixed with disappointment. 

He still doesn't know what's going on in Erik's mind, and the uncertainty gnaws at him. More so since last night and the way Erik winked at him in the observation car. Of course Erik had winked at Anne Catterall, too, about that dirty trick with the ice-bucket. Probably it meant nothing. Just the same, Charles had sat there wondering after Erik had gone, nursing a glass of Scotch he somehow never got round to finishing. Staring out at the night but seeing only Erik's face, teasing and unreadable. 

The last thing he'd expected to find when he went back to the roomette was Erik in the bottom bunk. _Charles's_ bunk. Apparently asleep, and naked to the waist. Or possibly just naked; Charles wasn't about to pull the covers back to find out.

At first he'd thought Erik was playing a trick on him, mocking him. Then, for a wild euphoric moment, he'd imagined Erik really wanted him and was taking an exceptionally direct way of showing it. 

But Erik was sound asleep, not faking it.

Charles clambered reluctantly into the top bunk, trying not to think _I'm in Erik's bed and he's in mine and last night these sheets I'm lying in were touching his body_. He turned the pillow over, but it was no use: he couldn't shut out his awareness of Erik so close, almost within touching distance. He lay awake for what felt like hours, unable to stop himself imagining what Erik's bare skin would feel like under his hands and his lips, aching with desire.

If the first night had been a torment, the second one was even more so. He'd slept at last, fitfully, but woken up early. Bolting from the sleeping-car and temptation, he'd taken refuge at the far end of the train in the Cable Car Lounge, where he'd ordered a ridiculously large breakfast he couldn't possibly finish. 

He was still staring moodily at half a stack of blueberry pancakes when Anne Catterall appeared. She'd accepted his invitation to join him and then sat drinking black coffee and eating grapefruit in a way that made the pancakes look even more incriminating. He wasn't surprised when she asked him to give Erik her number. In her place, he'd probably have done the same.

*~*~*~*

Charles takes his shoes off and lies down on the bed. Two broken nights in succession have left him giddy with fatigue and desperate for a nap. Five minutes, he’ll just close his eyes for five minutes...

The first thing he sees when he wakes up is the coffee-stain on his shirt, which must be from breakfast. He hadn't even noticed it happening – he must really have been out of it this morning. He gets up off the bed, rubbing his eyes, and goes to open his suitcase for a clean one.

 _Fuck._

Did he really leave the top of the shampoo bottle half-off like that? He must have done, because it's leaked all over his clean shirts. There's not one here that's fit to wear. Charles groans.

The landlady offers to run the shirts through the washing machine (“Just this once, dear, I don't normally do my guests' laundry”). She's obviously making an effort because she thinks Charles is English like her, and he doesn't have the heart to set her straight. 

Erik offers to lend Charles a clean shirt till his clothes are dry. Which is nice of him, but also seriously awkward, given the thoughts Charles has been having about him. 

“Thanks,” Charles mutters, and grabs a shirt from Erik’s bag more or less at random. He pulls it on hastily, feeling acutely self-conscious. 

Erik gives him a very odd look. He’s probably thinking what a graceless churl Charles is, or maybe that green doesn’t really suit him. Too late to change it now, though.

*~*~*~*

They stand side by side at the lodging-house window, looking down over the city. The view is far and away the best thing about the establishment – or it would be, if the city wasn’t currently shrouded in fog. 

“Mark Twain was right,” Charles says.

“About what?” Erik asks. He’s smoking, and Charles tries not to stare at his mouth and his hands, though it’s hard to look away.

“He said the coldest winter he ever spent was summer in San Francisco,” Charles says.

Erik laughs. “It’ll probably clear later,” he says. 

Charles reaches out with his mind, trying to find the mutant they’re looking for. But it feels as if there’s a different kind of fog, blanketing the man’s thought-waves. 

“That’s odd,” he says. “I can’t seem to locate him now.”

“Maybe he’s asleep,” Erik says, with a mocking glint that makes Charles flush with embarrassment. “Or on drugs,” he adds, more seriously, looking at the group of young people sprawled on the grass of Telegraph Hill Park. “It seems to be the neighbourhood for that.”

Drugs could make sense of the blanketing, Charles thinks. He feels a spike of frustration that his own mind is working so much below par. Sleeping in the daytime seems to have made him groggier, if anything. Or else he’s still allowing himself to be distracted by Erik.

“Let’s go and explore,” he says, hoping that a change of scene will help. He looks away from Erik and down at the fog-shrouded view again. His elbow brushes against Erik’s and the contact sends a jolt through him that nearly doubles him over. 

_Get out of here now, Xavier, before you do something you’ll regret._

He moves away from the window and puts on his jacket, not looking back at Erik.

“Yes, sure,” Erik says. He sounds as if his mind is on something else.

*~*~*~*

Charles always thought it would be fun to visit San Francisco; he’s only read about it and seen it in films, till now. And there’s so much to see: Chinatown and Fisherman’s Wharf; Nob Hill and the Mission Dolores; the Argonaut Bookshop and the paintings in the Legion of Honor. _Doing the Vertigo tour_ , he thinks wryly, as they stand at Fort Point, looking at the Golden Gate Bridge. He’s seized with a brief but powerful urge to jump into the water, like Kim Novak. Erik’s turn to save _him_.

But he’s not sure Erik would even notice him jumping in. Erik’s clearly fascinated by the bridge, staring at its massive span as if he could make it dance in the air. Maybe one day he will: the power Charles senses in him is strong enough for anything, though it’s still untrained and not under control.

They stroll through Golden Gate Park and fetch up in the Japanese Tea Garden, leaning on the moon bridge in the sunshine that’s finally broken through the fog. Charles reaches out for the mutant’s mind again, but the signal’s still faint, or rather it’s interrupted by what feels like bursts of static. Odd. _Very_ odd.

It’s late afternoon, and he realizes he’s ravenous. Those blueberry pancakes on the train feel a long time in the past. 

“I think the CIA owes us a decent dinner for once,” he says. “How about going to the Cliff House?”

“Fine by me,” Erik says. “But maybe you’d better keep off the oysters.”

Charles feels the hot wave of colour sweeping from his neck to the tips of his ears. He’s never going to live that stupid excuse down, is he?

“Better go back to the house first and see if my clothes are dry,” he says gloomily. 

“Yes indeed,” Erik says. “We can’t have you going out to dinner in a borrowed shirt, Charles. That would never do.” 

He’s looking at Charles with that odd expression again. Charles is still wondering what it means as they board the trolleybus to go back to Hudson Villa.


	4. Stubborn Kind Of Fellow

The Sky Tram strikes Erik as an extraordinary piece of nonsense: why suspend yourself in a box on steel cables just in order to swing out over the ocean for a four-minute ride to a couple of fake waterfalls and then back again? It's not as if they're _going_ anywhere. He wonders if he'll ever get used to the childishness of Americans.

Charles looks marginally more comfortable now he's changed for dinner. It's a relief to Erik, too, though he'd enjoyed the sight of Charles in his green shirt. If “enjoyed” is the right word for _wanting to rip it off Charles followed by the rest of his clothes throw him down on the creaky lodging-house bed and ravish him right there and then_. Which it probably isn't.

Charles's discomfiture had been part of the fun in lending him the shirt in the first place, of course. He's ridiculously appealing when he's flustered, and the impulse to make it worse by teasing him is very hard to resist. Erik hadn't been trying very hard to resist it, though he had at least refrained from pointing out that Charles had buttoned the shirt up all wrong...

But he really shouldn't be wasting his time having sexual thoughts about Charles when it's obvious Charles isn't interested. Look at the way he swung into flirting with the Hitchcock blonde on the train. And then this morning, flaunting the fact that he'd had breakfast with the woman, and acting all reproachful because she'd asked him to give Erik her number. It's not _Erik's_ fault – he doesn't care if he never sees her again, even if his last impression of her was more favourable than the first. As far as he's concerned, it's a pity she turned up at all, though if it hadn't been her it would have been some other woman. Charles just can't help himself – Erik's seen it again and again on this trip. The utterly shameless way the man licks his lips or rubs them with one finger, as if he needed to call attention to his mouth when – well, that and Charles's impossible intense blue stare must account for a good 90% of his success rate with women, given the abysmally low quality of his pick-up lines. 

If Charles ever looked at Erik like that...

He's not going to, though, is he? This trip is strictly business, at least as far as his relationship with Erik is concerned. 

Erik's frustration wants something to work itself out on, and the automata in the Sutro Baths museum are a major temptation. But it's stupid and dangerous to call attention to his mutation without good reason. So he leaves the slot machines and pinball tables and weird mechanical toys to go through their predictable paces, and follows Charles to the Cliff House restaurant.

Their waiter is a mutant, which surprises Erik. Charles spots it right away, of course. 

“He has a tail!” Charles tells Erik, hardly waiting till the man's out of earshot. At least he says it quietly, rather than broadcasting it to the entire restaurant. Obviously he's learned _something_ from that awkward business with Hank at the research facility.

“Good for him,” Erik says. 

He's not sure what you'd do with a tail, or why Charles is so excited about it, but it probably has its uses. 

_If you had a tail you could wrap it around Charles's cock and jerk him off while you fucked him, both hands on his hips, slow, slow, till he begged for mercy, begged you to move harder, faster..._

Whoa.

Charles looks in surprise at the salt-cellar on the table, which has just developed a slight but perceptible bend in the middle.

“Scheisse!” Erik mutters under his breath. He concentrates on making the wretched thing unkink itself again and refrains from looking at Charles.

In addition to the tail, the waiter seems to have a knack of total recall and of being in two places at once. Useful in his profession, Erik thinks. He's not surprised when Charles fails to recruit the man – he seems to be popular here and he must be raking in the tips.

Charles looks disappointed just the same. Erik wants to shake him.

“You don't understand, do you, Charles?” he says, irritation spilling over. “It's a mystery to you why anyone wouldn't want to be part of your happy little band.”

Charles continues to look like a sad puppy, and Erik feels a twinge of guilt about being nasty to him, but really... Charles _ought_ to understand about this. It's easy for him to pass, and he takes full advantage of that. He uses his mutation when it suits him and the rest of the time he goes around in disguise as a buttoned-down professorial type, conventional as you like in his tweed jackets and cardigans. Yes, there's the drinking – and the womanizing – but neither of those is anything out of the ordinary.

Charles frowns, and for a moment Erik wonders if – despite his promise – he's reading Erik's mind.

“You think I'm naïve,” Charles says. 

(Which isn't actually what Erik was thinking, so obviously he was wrong about the mind-reading.)

“Is it naïve to want to build a future where all of us feel safe and valued, whatever our mutation?” Charles asks.

 _Yes_ , Erik thinks, though he's fairly sure it's a rhetorical question.

“Nobody wants to give up their life for something completely unknown, Charles,” he says. “Not unless their life is wretched, and not always even then.”

Charles pouts, but he must know it's true. Change, and difference: most people hate and fear them both. This is what's going to happen more often than not in recruiting. That's assuming you actually get as far as asking, rather than being told to go fuck yourself before you've had a chance to explain what you're doing.

It's an argument they've had before, but it doesn't show any signs of going away. Erik tries to keep his anger reined in, not wanting to deform any more small metal objects in the neighbourhood. He can feel it simmering away, just the same. Charles has a way of getting under his skin. No-one else has ever had such a strong effect on him, not with just words. 

_It's not just the words, though, is it?_ He's not going to let himself think about that. 

The waiter is wonderfully attentive, as if to make up for rejecting Charles's proposition, and the food's good here. Erik mops up the last of the clam chowder with the excellent sourdough bread. He still doesn't eat pork, but shellfish always makes him glad not to have been brought up in a more orthodox household. The white wine hits the right spot between flowery and steely, and he feels himself begin to unwind a little, though he knows he mustn't relax too much.

Charles's pleasure in _moules marinières_ borders on the obscene. He sucks and licks shamelessly at the mussel shells, as if he's determined not to waste a drop of the rich liquor. His lips are glossy with sauce, and his cheeks are flushed.

“Are you all right, Erik?” Charles asks. “You look a bit pale.”

“I'm fine,” Erik lies, crossing his legs. He looks carefully at a spot just to the left of Charles's head, because if he looks right at Charles he might do something irrevocable, not to mention illegal. He breathes deeply and concentrates on all the metal structures he can feel around him.

Usually he's better at screening out the call of metal – he'd go mad otherwise – but something about this city is stripping away all his customary blocks and defences. The constantly moving subterranean steel ropes of the cable cars grind out a jarring bass to the shrilling high sound of the trolley wires that criss-cross the sky. He can feel the whirr of the automata in the basement, the sway of the Sky Tram, the careening swoops and spins of all the amusement park rides in Playland...

“Just a bit sleepy from the wine,” he says, and sees Charles's eyebrows shoot up in disbelief.

(Seriously, Lehnsherr, can you not come up with a better excuse than that?)

It's still better than Charles's bad oyster story, Erik thinks. He never did find out what that was about, and he probably never will. 

Charles signals for the bill and says “Let's get some air before bed.”

It's foggy outside again, and Erik is glad of it. Even if Charles isn't reading his mind, he feels as if his inappropriate thoughts about _bed_ and _Charles_ and _bed_ are written all over his face.


	5. Can't Judge A Book By The Cover

It's nice to have his own clothes again, but Charles knows he sticks out like a sore thumb. In the bohemian world this particular mutant apparently inhabits, even the casual end of Charles's wardrobe (tweed sports jacket, navy cashmere cardigan) looks too formal. Erik's leather jacket is much more the thing, and his turtleneck's practically existentialist uniform-issue. He looks right at home in Vesuvio Cafe, smoking, drinking black coffee, a slim volume of Beat poetry in his hand.

A bit too much at home, Charles thinks sourly. Three young men with wild hair and wilder eyes have tried to pick Erik up already, drawing their obvious conclusions from that volume of Ginsberg he's brooding over. Can't blame them for trying, but Charles is irritated by it all the same. They're having no luck, of course. Why would Erik bother with scruffy unwashed aspiring poets when there's a glamorous blonde just waiting for him to pick up the phone?

Charles doesn't think Erik has rung Anne Catterall, though he's carefully refrained from asking. It's really none of his business what Erik does when he's not trying to recruit mutants to the cause.

The one they've come to find must be around here somewhere, though he hasn't shown up yet. There have been other possibilities – the waiter at the Cliff House last night, and a woman this morning in City Lights bookstore who could see through walls, who he'd thought seemed really promising. But the waiter didn't want to leave his job, and the woman has a child. A mutant child, but too young to recruit, and they don't have the resources yet... 

Charles dreams of a school where mutant children could be nurtured and encouraged right from the start, even though Erik scoffs at him for being sentimental (“It's war, Charles, don't you understand that? You don't have time to start a school in the middle of a war.”). 

The image he'd seen in Erik's mind of his mother was so jagged with pain and anger about Shaw that Charles could scarcely look at it, a blazing Keep Out sign. He doesn't tell Erik about the woman in City Lights; he knows it wouldn't be a good idea.

“Are you sure Cerebro gave you the right coordinates?” Erik asks. He sounds irritable. It's probably all that unwanted attention.

“Maybe you should put _Howl_ away,” Charles says. “If you want to discourage your admirers, that is.”

Erik gives him a _very_ odd look. He's been in a strange mood ever since they got here. At first Charles thought it might still be the hangover, but he's never known a hangover to last this long, and it's not as if they had a lot to drink last night.

A skinny boy in ripped canvas trousers and a baggy sweater is hovering, staring at them. Not _another_ one, Charles thinks. Really, if this goes on much longer he'll have to get a stick to beat them off with. 

_Or you could just make him look unattractive_ , the voice in his head tempts him.

But he wouldn't do that. Wouldn't want to do that. Yes, he'd played that silly trick on Angel but that was just a joke, a quick demonstration, not a lasting illusion. And changing Erik's looks would be like – like defacing Michelangelo's _David_.

He isn't sure why he thinks of that, but it's definitely not helping, imagining Erik's naked torso, white and smooth as marble but warm to the touch... Charles swallows hard and wills himself to think of tax returns or the weather or baseball scores. Or mutant coordinates. _Focus_.

“You dig Ginsberg?” the skinny boy asks Erik excitedly.

Charles has a powerful impulse to dump the grubby kid in a bath. A _cold_ bath.

“Yes,” Erik says gravely, apparently trying not to laugh, “I dig him.”

“Man,” the skinny boy says, “I love that poem.” He starts reciting, waving his arms around: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked...”

Erik listens and smiles at him, that rare smile Charles feels a pang at seeing him give to someone else.

“My friends think all oldsters are squares,” the boy says, snapping his nicotine-stained fingers and moving in a kind of dance, his whole body shaking, “but you're not, are you?”

“No,” Erik says, and his mouth twitches with amusement, “no, we're not. Charles here knows all about what's _groovy_.”

 _Fuck you_ , Charles projects furiously.

Erik raises his eyebrows, but Charles doesn't care. The skinny boy looks at Charles, clearly finds him utterly unworthy of notice, and looks back starry-eyed at Erik.

“Stay cool, daddy-o,” he says, and is gone, leaving a whiff of – what is that, _marijuana_? – behind him.

“Oldsters,” Erik says. “Huh.”

“He still wanted to go to bed with you,” Charles mutters under his breath. Aloud he says “Yeah, _daddy-o_.”

“I've had enough of this,” Erik says, grimacing. “I'm going back to the house.”

“OK,” Charles says. “I'll come up in a while.”

He doesn't know why this particular mutant is being so hard to find, but he can feel a kind of crackle around the idea of him. There's an image of a place, too – some kind of shop window full of strange objects, crystal balls and silk scarves and weirdly-shaped candles, bottles and jars of god knows what. Some kind of pseudo-healer, perhaps? That would be a good disguise: a mutant pretending to be a – what would you call him? Charlatan, fraud, snake-oil salesman, con man... the names don't quite fit the shape the idea of this mutant makes in his head. But it's a bit like all of them.

Maybe they should just ask for directions, Charles thinks, reluctantly tearing his eyes away from Erik's back view as he pushes the door open and disappears into the street. If only they knew what they were asking for...

“You lookin' for someone?” the bartender asks. A big man, slow-moving, with a glass of bourbon (his second, apparently) sitting nearly empty in front of him. _This one's trouble, send him down the street_ , Charles can hear him thinking.

“Yes,” Charles says. “I wonder if you can help. A friend told me about a rather interesting shop somewhere in the neighbourhood but I didn't catch the name.”

He sends the man a mental image of the shop window, with a misdirection that'll make him think Charles has asked the right questions.

“You mean the Guru,” the bartender says.

“Yes,” Charles says, feigning eagerness though he's not sure – it's the first proper lead they've had and he's not about to turn it down. “Yes, of course, stupid of me, the Guru. Where do I find him?”

“Corner of Greenwich and Stockton,” the man says. “There's a sign over the door, says GURU in capital letters. You can't miss it,” he adds, with what Charles feels is wholly unnecessary sarcasm.

“Thank you very much, you've been tremendously helpful,” Charles says. He knows he becomes more British and polite when he's angry.

He should have asked earlier. Then he wouldn't have had to sit here watching Erik bowling over his young admirers. Charles grits his teeth.

There's a flash of amusement from the bartender – Charles picks up something like _Geez, this one's so uptight, you can tell he's not getting any_.

What does that have to do with anything? Charles wonders irritably. Well, he's not going to waste his time rummaging through this tired old lush's mind for clues. He's going to catch up with Erik and then track down this so-called Guru.

*~*~*~*

Erik's just across the street, looking in the window of City Lights.

“I thought you were going back to the house,” Charles says. He doesn't mean it to sound accusing.

Erik gestures to the poster in the window: a beautiful young woman with a guitar, looking soulful. FELICIA CESARIO, the poster says, VOICE OF A GENERATION. TONIGHT AT 8.30.

He didn't know Erik liked that sort of thing, though maybe he likes the look of the girl –

“Someone pushed this into my pocket in the bar,” Erik says, producing a flyer that matches the poster. There's a message scrawled on it: _I know what you're looking for. Be there tonight._

Oh, _really_. If Erik can't recognize another clumsy pick-up attempt when he sees one...

“It might be nothing,” Erik says. “Then again, it might be something. And it's not as if we had other plans.”

“Folk music,” Charles says, pulling a face. One of the earnest girls he knew at Oxford liked that stuff, and had dragged him to a purgatorial session of weedy off-key ballads. Charles had not been popular for suggesting that the singer's finger-in-the-ear pose was so she couldn't hear how frightful she sounded.

“You're out of touch, Charles,” Erik says. “Folk music is the in thing these days. It's practically groovy.”

Charles is beginning to wish he'd never heard the word.

“I got a lead on our man,” he says hastily.

“Good,” Erik says, looking sharkishly pleased. “Almost makes the last hour worthwhile.” 

“I thought you fitted in rather well.” He knows he sounds jealous and that makes it even worse.

“I'm sure you could pass for a hep cat,” Erik teases him, “especially if you keep stealing my clothes.”

“That won't happen again,” Charles says stiffly. He can feel that he's blushing again, which is seriously annoying. This is officially the worst recruiting expedition _ever_.


	6. Runaway

If Charles was worrying about being out of place at the folk concert, it's nothing to the conspicuous effect made by the blonde from the train. Anne – Anne Catterall, that was it. _Of all the bars in all the towns in all the world_ , Erik thinks, torn between wry amusement and bewilderment. What's she doing here? 

She hardly seems to know she's out of place, sitting demurely on a low stool and pulling her tailored skirt down over her knees, smoothing the grey cloth restlessly with her well manicured hands. It's the only sign of discomfort she gives; her face is impassive, serene, as she listens to the young woman's songs. 

Felicia Cesario is good, better than Erik expected. Even Charles, who'd been so opposed to coming, sits up and listens to that slightly rough, plangent sound, the pleasing edge of it. She's good to look at, of course, with her long dark hair and treacle-brown eyes, caramel-coloured skin, and Charles always has an eye for a pretty girl, but Erik doesn't think it's just that. There's anger and hope and passionate conviction in her voice as she sings her songs of love lost and found, of protest against injustice, songs about restless youth on the move, local politics and international affairs, the fear of nuclear destruction, the longing for peace. 

He doesn't know any of the songs but he gets the feeling most of them are new, even when the music sounds old. One song, though, he does recognize. Like all riddles, it's simple when you know the answers. 

_I gave my love a cherry, it had no stone,  
I gave my love a chicken, it had no bone,  
I told my love a story, it had no end,  
I gave my love a baby with no cryin'._

_How can there be a cherry without a stone?  
How can there be a chicken without a bone?  
How can there be a story that has no end?  
How can there be a baby with no cryin'?_

_Well a cherry when it's bloomin', it has no stone,  
A chicken when it's pippin', it has no bone,  
The story of “I love you”, it has no end,  
A baby when it's sleeping, has no cryin'_. 

Erik looks across at Anne Catterall and sees her face is wet with tears. Charles would know why, but you don't have to be a telepath to guess – a lost child somewhere along the way, or maybe she wanted kids and couldn't have them. She doesn't wear a wedding ring but she looks like a woman who's been married, though he couldn't say what he means by that. She catches him looking and there's a flash of anger in her eyes. Erik looks away – whatever Charles says, he has _some_ tact. 

He closes his eyes and lets the songs wash over him: songs without history, without associations for him. It's a relief. He can feel Charles's stillness beside him, no fidgeting or restlessness. Erik still doesn't know what the scribbled message on the flyer meant, but for now he's content to wait and see what happens, to enjoy a rare moment of calm.

When he looks around during the break he's surprised to see Anne Catterall deep in conversation with the singer at the bar. It doesn't look as if they're just chatting about the music – she's gripping Felicia's arm and her expression is strained.

Erik goes to the bar and orders whisky for Charles and a beer for himself. This doesn't look like the place for cocktails.

“ _Please_ ,” Anne Catterall is saying. “He's my _son_. I have to find him.”

“If I knew where he was, I wouldn't tell you,” the girl says fiercely, pulling away from Anne's grasp. “Not if he didn't want to be found.”

“How do you know _that_ , if you don't know him?” Anne says. She sounds close to tears.

“I said _if_ ,” Felicia says. “Look, I know a lot of runaways, and they've always run for a reason. If they'd wanted their folks to know where they were they'd have stayed home, or stayed in touch. Our generation doesn't want the same things yours did. You've made a mess of the world and it's our turn now; we're going to change things. But we can't do that by staying tied to your apron-strings. We have to be free, to live our own lives.”

Erik gets the feeling it's a speech she's made before. He wonders how it usually goes down.

“You don't understand,” Anne says.

“So explain it to me,” the girl says, just this side of insolent.

Anne's fists are clenched and her knuckles are white – Erik wonders if she's about to hit the girl.

“I really must congratulate you,” Charles's smooth voice says, interrupting the moment. “I'm not a fan of folk music in general, as Erik can testify, but your singing was lovely... Oh – I'm so sorry, am I interrupting?”

Nicely done, Erik thinks. “It's true,” he says drily. “Charles really doesn't care for folk music, but he was riveted.”

“Anne!” Charles says, as if he's only just noticed she's there. “What a pleasure to see you again.”

“Professor Xavier,” Anne says, and the formality matches the coldness of her tone.

“We seem to be fated to run into each other,” Charles says cheerfully. 

Erik half-expects Anne to slap him. He'd be sorely tempted to, in her place.

“It does seem extraordinary,” Anne says. She sounds as if she doesn't think it's a coincidence at all. As if Charles and Erik are following her. Ironic, Erik thinks, though it is the obvious conclusion for her to draw.

Charles puts his fingers to his temple – he's up to something, Erik thinks, but what? 

“Do go on,” Charles says to Felicia, with an encouraging smile.

“I won't tell you where your son is,” Felicia says to Anne. “But I can tell you he's well, and happy.”

Anne turns pale at that, and for a moment Erik thinks she's going to faint.

“Promise me,” she says. “ _Promise_ me you're telling the truth.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” the girl says.

“Thank you,” Anne whispers, but Felicia's not listening. She's turned away and is talking to Charles, who's laying on the charm with a trowel.

“Brandy,” Erik says to the barman. “For the lady.”

He makes Anne drink it and pushes a stool under her just as her legs give way. The brandy makes her cough and splutter but there's a bit more colour in her cheeks once she's swallowed some. She gives him a quick grateful look.

“You're kinder to me here than you were on the train,” she says, with an attempt at lightness.

 _I didn't know about your son then_ , he thinks. 

His mind shies away from the memory of his mother's face, her desperate attempt at reassurance and forgiveness: _Alles ist gut. Alles ist gut._

“California must be getting to me,” he says, forcing a smile. “Or else it's the folk music.”

She pulls a face and drinks some more brandy.

“Looks like it's about to start again,” Erik says, as the MC takes to the makeshift stage. “Do you want to get some air?”

She grips his arm as thankfully as if he'd offered it, which he didn't mean to. _Still in shock_ , he thinks.

It's cool outside, after the stuffiness of the bar. Anne leans against the wall and fumbles for a cigarette. Her hands are shaking so much she can't hold the lighter, and Erik only just stops it from falling. It hangs in mid-air for a long disastrous moment before he catches it in his palm and snaps it open, holds it still as she lights her cigarette. 

Anne inhales deeply, staring at him. “You're one of them,” she says.

Stressing the _one_ rather than the _them_ , Erik notices.

“Yes,” he says, because there's not much point denying it now.

She's silent, smoking and shaking.

“John – my son,” she says eventually, “I think he might be one too.”

“You don't know?”

She shakes her head. “I always knew he was different, but I thought he was...” She trails off.

 _Thought he was what?_ Erik wonders. 

“ _Sensitive_ ,” she says wryly. “I thought he was the kind of boy who – likes other boys.”

“Ah,” Erik says. “Yes, that happens.” 

“There was an older boy,” she says. “John was obsessed with him. My husband – when he found out, he blamed me for making his son a sissy.”

She turns her head away, as if the memory – of violent words, maybe even of blows – makes her ashamed to meet his eye. 

Erik's gut clenches with rage, and he feels the song of the trolley wires grow louder, shriller. All this for a stranger, for a stranger's child; pointless, he tells himself, but he can't help it. 

“Is that why he ran away?” he asks. “Because of his father?”

“No,” she says, and it's almost a whisper. “The other boy was – he was killed.” There's a long pause and then she says “The police came looking for John but he'd gone. He just took off, without a word... with nothing. That was five years ago.”

She's holding herself very still, gripping the cigarette as it burns down to the filter.

“I saw him,” she says. “Last week. There was a news item on the TV about the Embarcadero freeway and I saw him. That girl was there too, singing at the rally. My husband wouldn't believe it was him, but I knew.”

Erik thinks the husband probably wants the boy to stay lost. Ashamed of him. 

“Look,” he says, “I'll talk to Charles. Maybe he can – maybe we can help you find John.”

He puts his hand on her arm, feeling awkward, but the situation seems to require some sort of physical contact.

“Thank you,” she says with a sort of automatic politeness that suggests she doesn't think they will. Or doesn't think they can.

Erik's on the point of explaining about Charles's gift when Charles himself emerges from the bar, muttering grimly about the owner's banjo-playing. He looks at Erik's hand on Anne's arm and says “I'm interrupting again, aren't I?”

“No,” Erik says, taking his hand away. 

Charles looks questioningly at Anne, as if he's not going to take Erik's word for this.

“No,” she says evenly. “You're not. I was just leaving.” She fishes her car keys out of her bag. “Call me if you – if you hear anything,” she says to Erik.

“Of course,” he says.

“Can you find out where her son is?” Erik says, as they watch her drive away.

“Oh, I know where he is,” Charles says.

Erik stares at him in disbelief. “Why didn't you tell her? She's desperate, Charles.”

“I didn't tell her because he's the one we're looking for,” Charles says. “You said it yourself, Erik, there's no place for sentiment now.”

“So, what, we recruit him and just don't tell her?” Erik says, bile rising in his throat.

“The girl meant what she said,” Charles says wearily. “He doesn't want to be found, and it's obviously his parents he's hiding from. Them, and the police.”

“You don't know that!” Erik says. He feels the wires humming with strain, feels something on the verge of snapping.

“Look,” Charles says, and he sounds so reasonable Erik could strangle him, “we'll go to his shop tomorrow and find out, and then we'll tell her. If we tell her now she may scare him off. Then _nobody_ finds him. Would that be better?”

“Don't you ever get tired of being such a fucking know-it-all?” Erik blazes.

“Do you ever get tired of being able to move metal?” Charles asks. He's gone very pale.

“Sorry,” Erik mutters.

“That's – all right, my friend,” Charles says, but Erik knows it isn't, not really.

“Charles–”

“We'll do what we can for her, Erik, I promise,” Charles says tightly.

And that's all Erik can get from him for the rest of the evening. Charles claims he's got a headache, maybe it's true. But it feels as if something's gone badly wrong between them and Erik doesn't know how to make it right.

He sleeps badly, dreaming of a big deserted house, searchlights, gunfire, a boy in a red jacket lying slumped on the ground.


	7. Cupid

The placard in the window screams YOUR LOVE TROUBLES ARE OVER! Big block capitals, surrounded by red hearts. Underneath, slightly smaller, it says _Infallible advice on all matters of the heart. Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back._

“A love guru,” Erik says, in tones of withering scepticism.

It occurs to Charles, belatedly, that this must be why the barman in Cafe Vesuvio was speculating about his sex life.

 _FAGGOTS!_ The voice in his head is so loud he thinks for a moment Erik must have heard it too, but Erik doesn't react. 

There's no-one around but an old man across the street, staring at the two of them outside the guru's shop. He catches Charles looking back at him, and spits in the gutter.

Charles struggles against the impulse to retaliate. _Just ignore him and he'll go away, don't use your powers, don't call attention to yourself..._ They haven't come all this way to change some elderly bigot's mind about homosexuality. So Charles turns his back and says nothing. It feels like a long time till the man stops staring and totters away.

They peer in through the window of the guru's shop, staring at the cracked crystal ball, the beaded curtain, the candles and tealights, dubious pots and jars of potions, the Tarot cards and crystals and other paraphernalia. Erik's expression is beyond sceptical, amused and faintly contemptuous. He obviously thinks they're wasting their time here. Or maybe he's still brooding about Anne Catterall.

“Come on,” Charles says, “Let's go in.”

The wind chimes tinkle as he pushes the door open, and he and Erik move uncertainly into the dimly lit interior. There's a strong smell of patchouli from the incense burner hanging from the ceiling.

“Hi,” the guru says, appearing from the back of the shop. 

Do gurus usually say Hi? Charles wonders. 

The guru grins, for all the world as if he's read Charles's thoughts, though Charles can't feel the brush of another mind against his own. Maybe he's just reading Charles's expression, or Erik's. That wouldn't be hard, Charles thinks, grimacing.

The boy doesn't _look_ much like a guru. He could still be that dark skinny kid Charles had seen in Anne's memories of him, huge-eyed and frail – though that might be the drugs Charles is pretty sure he's taking. He looks more confident now, but Charles still wonders how he gets people to trust him: he doesn't look old enough to be dishing out advice on love.

Erik's wandering around the shop, picking up objects and putting them down again. Charles can't tell if he's mostly bored, or angry, or just curious. They were awkward and strained with each other this morning, still haven't made up after the row last night. He wants to reach out to Erik and he doesn't know how. They have to be able to work together – it's too important a mission to jeopardize with stupid personal tensions.

“Charles Xavier,” he says, forcing a smile and holding out his hand for the boy to shake. “And this is Erik Lehnsherr.”

The guru takes his hand but doesn't shake it. Instead he turns it so it's facing palm upwards and looks intently at the lines on it.

A charlatan's trick, Charles knows, but it unsettles him just the same. The boy's hand is warm and dry, no sign of nerves. But why should he be nervous? He probably thinks they're just clients. Not as a couple, obviously, because that would be impossible... 

Charles clears his throat. “We've been looking for you.”

“I know,” the guru says, surprisingly. “And now you've found me.” He lets go of Charles's hand and looks at him expectantly.

“You were hard to find,” Charles says, trying not to sound reproachful. No point in antagonizing the fellow.

“I meant to be,” the boy says calmly. “I have to be careful, you know.”

“How do you do it?” Charles asks. Because really it should not have been this hard to track him down, not when they'd already got a fix on him from Cerebro.

The guru smiles, sweet and oddly sad. “I don't let people find me unless they really need to,” he says. “And I wasn't sure at first if you needed to.”

Erik harrumphs with impatience.

“You know why we're here, then?” Charles says, ignoring him.

“I know why you've found me,” the boy says. Charles isn't sure what the difference means, though he notices it.

“We want you to join us,” Charles says. “We're like you.”

“Like me?” the guru echoes, staring at him.

“Mutants,” Erik says irritably. “Charles is a telepath and I–” 

He gestures at the counter and one of the Tibetan singing bowls rises up in the air, the metal stick drawing deep, echoing sounds from it as it dances at his bidding.

“Pretty,” the guru says dismissively.

“ _Erik_ ,” Charles says warningly, as the bowl moves sharply towards the guru's head.

Erik scowls and the bowl and stick clatter back onto the counter.

“The first time I met Erik,” Charles says quietly, “he'd just destroyed a yacht with its anchor chain and was trying to raise a submarine from the ocean. It would be a mistake to underestimate his powers.” 

“Are you threatening me?” the boy asks. He doesn't sound scared.

“No,” Charles says. “Nobody's threatening anybody. Just trying to be clear. You have strong powers yourself – I've felt that. But I don't know yet what you can do, apart from making it very hard for people to find you.”

Erik's turned away and is rummaging through bowls and boxes of stuff, muttering to himself. He really is in an exceptionally foul mood today. Charles sighs. _Stay focused_ , he tells himself.

“Please tell me what your gift is,” he says patiently.

“Help yourself, Mr Lehnsherr,” the boy says as Erik fiddles with what looks like some kind of fancy plastic pen. “They're new – one of my Japanese clients brought them.”

He waits until Erik's started testing the pen and then says to Charles “My gift is knowing what people want. _Who_ they want, and what they need from them. Better than they know it themselves.”

“A kind of telepathy, then?” Charles says.

“It's hard to explain,” the guru says. He looks at Erik and then back again at Charles. “For example,” he says, “I know why you're unhappy.”

All of Charles's defences flare up at that. What can this boy _possibly_ know about him and Erik?

“I can tell you what to do about it, if you want,” the guru says confidingly, “and I promise you, it _will_ work.”

Charles glances at Erik, who seems to be absorbed in drawing complicated patterns of lines and stars and triangles.

“That's not what we're here for,” Charles says flatly.

The boy shrugs. “OK. But if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

Charles has no intention of asking anyone's advice about Erik, least of all some scrawny drug addict, but he doesn't say so.

“When did you first know about your gift?” he asks.

The boy's face clouds, and Charles gets a flash of remembered pain from him, so fierce it feels like a pang in his own body. Obviously there's some link between the gift and the reason he's on the run, though Charles can't tell yet what it is.

“I don't–” the guru says. He looks younger all of a sudden, vulnerable. “I can't–”

“May I?” Charles says, gesturing with his fingers to his temple.

The boy hesitates, looking as if he's about to say no. Then he seems to change his mind. 

“OK,” he says, “but make it quick.”

*~*~*~*

It's a jumble of images at first, the pain surrounding them so strong it's like trying to hear through static on a radio. A young man in a red jacket, tall and strong and broad-shouldered, slouching in the hallways of a school building; clinging to a speeding car before he jumps clear at the last minute; smoking a cigarette in the garden of a long-deserted house. A tangle of bodies sprawled sleeping in a big bare room: the boy is one of them, and yet he's not, as if he's been split in two. A searchlight sweeping across the summer night, and a figure in a red jacket crumpling to the ground, a dark stain spreading from it as if the colour's leaching away. A blaze of white light and then darkness coming down like a lid.

Another scene, stronger and clearer than the first images. It must be winter now. The clock on the wall says it's half-past three but outside the light is already fading. The diner's almost empty and the jukebox is playing a Sam Cooke song, “You Send Me”. The middle-aged waitress sits down on the banquette with a sigh of relief, taking the weight off her feet. She loosens the pins from her greying hair and lets it fall, then twists the knot back into place again. She looks at the boy as if she's about to say something, stops herself, chews her lip. Lights a cigarette and inhales deeply, staring into space.

“How did you know about Frank and Darlene?” she asks, after a long pause.

Charles feels the boy's surprise as he answers: “I thought everyone knew.”

“No,” the woman says wryly, “nobody knew. Even I didn't know, and people tell me things, you'd be surprised. Or maybe you wouldn't.”

“Huh,” he says. Then, anxiously, “Did I – will there be trouble, now?”

“Oh, honey, no,” the waitress says. “You saw the way they looked.”

Another thought strikes him, though he can hardly believe it. “Didn't _they_ know?”

She smiles, and there's a twist of sadness in it. “You know, I don't believe they did. All these years...”

They sit quiet for a while, but at last she gets up, stretching, grumbling at her aching muscles. 

“Here,” she says, pouring him another soda, “it's on the house.”

He sucks at the straw and thinks about what happened. “I could _see_ it,” he says. “I never did before.”

“Well, honey,” she says. “If you go on seeing things like that, you surely won't die poor.”

He doesn't understand, and it shows.

“Listen,” she says patiently, “I've worked here for 16 years. I've seen a lot. And what people want, what they want more than anything, is love. If you've got the key to that – boy, you can make a fortune. If you want to.”

He drinks his soda and wonders. He wishes he could see someone for her: she's kind, and good, and not bad-looking, though she must be as old as his mother, maybe even older. But there's been no-one since her husband died, he knows that, and none of the customers who come in here have that glow around them that links to her.

“Don't you worry about me,” she says, catching his look. “I'm just fine the way I am.”

He knows it's not true but he doesn't argue.

“Thanks,” he says shyly. “For the soda. And the advice.”

She turns away to wipe down the counter and he thinks about Frank in his electrician's overalls and Darlene in her apron, about the moment of seeing them transfigured and shining. He wonders if that's how _he_ looked when he was with Jim, or whether you can only see the glow when it's mutual.

He finds out, later: Charles watches him learning the shades of it, the bright or muted colours that arc between lovers, between friends, between strangers. He still doesn't believe there's money to be made, though he'll accept payment in kind: a night's lodging, a meal or a cup of coffee, a pack of cigarettes, a joint, a few pills. He hitches rides that take him steadily further west, till he gets to San Francisco. And it's there that he finds his community and his vocation.

He meets Felicia early on, busking in the sunshine in Golden Gate Park. She's the one who finds the shop for him, fitting it out with objects scrounged or donated or borrowed from her beatnik friends who come to the shop to gossip and stare, stay for advice and spread the word. There's no-one in his own life who has that glow for him, but he doesn't expect it, not after what happened with Jim. He doesn't look in the mirror but he feels there's a mark on him that keeps people at a distance. 

_You can make a fortune_ , Dot had said. _If you want to_. He makes a living, not a fortune, but what does he need with money? He has enough to eat, a roof over his head, all the drugs anyone could want when he needs to get high or to come down. He has friends, not close, but close enough. No-one like Jim, and mostly no-one like him either, though everyone's pretty laid-back. Live and let live.

His father would hate this world, hate him more if possible for living in it. His mother – well, he tries not to think about her. She stayed with _him_ , after all.

Some nights he still wakes up sweating, thinking he's back in the house, a child cowering under his father's rage. A part of him knows his mother must have been afraid too, that it would have taken more courage than she possessed to leave. But he can't let himself think about that...

*~*~*~*

Charles clears his throat; the intensity of those last memories has left him feeling awkward, as if he's seen something he shouldn't have been shown. 

He's assailed by a vivid memory of his own: Anne's desperation last night at the bar, that fierce mixture of love and shame that coloured her thoughts about her son. The force of the recollection catches him by surprise – it's so strong he wonders if any of it has spilled from his own mind into the guru's, though he's usually careful not to let that happen. 

He drops his hand to his side.

“Thank you,” he says, formally. “That's – a remarkable gift to have.” 

He can't exactly see how it could be turned to use for their cause, but the power is undeniable. And to have that gift of misdirection, invisibility almost, as a _secondary_ mutation...

“As I said, we'd like you to join us,” he says. 

“I'm happy here,” the guru says calmly.

Charles wouldn't have said _happy_ was the word, but he doesn't challenge him.

“I have everything I need,” the guru insists. “Why would I want to join you?”

“To be with your own kind,” Charles says. “Among friends. Not to be alone any more.”

“I'm not alone now,” the guru says. “Not unless I want to be.”

“I've had enough of this,” Erik says. “I don't know how you breathe in here.” He shoves the door open and goes out abruptly, without saying goodbye or looking back.

It's true that the fumes of incense are quite strong, but Charles feels a pang of anxiety just the same. He _thinks_ Erik means he's had enough of the shop, but maybe he means the whole recruiting trip –

“You should tell him,” the guru says, as Erik disappears out of sight up the hill. “It's the only way.”

“Tell him what?” Charles sounds unconvincing even to himself.

“That you want him,” the boy says matter-of-factly. “Tell him, or show him.”

Charles is going to walk out of that door right now and end this foolishness. Except –

“What do you see between us?” he asks, unable to stop himself.

“It's a strong line,” the guru says. “Bright and clear in the middle. But there's a shadow on either side of it. You can make that go away if you do what I tell you.”

Charles can hardly believe he's still listening to this stuff. It sounds like the worst kind of hokum. But he's seen that power at work, in the memories – the boy may talk like a fake, but he isn't one. And Charles wants so much to escape from this feeling of being torn in two all the time, between Erik and the mission. Maybe if he could have Erik then he'd stop being so distracted. 

Looked at like that, of course, it's practically Charles's _duty_ to find a way to get Erik into bed.

“OK,” he says, managing not to roll his eyes. “Tell me what to do.”


	8. You Can Run (But You Can't Hide)

Erik strides up the hill, breathing hard, trying to shake off the cloying fumes of incense, a sweet-rotten stink that makes him think of flowers strewn on a corpse.

Charles's voice rings in his head: _Not to be alone any more_. The promise he'd made Erik, that night in the water: _You're not alone. I'm like you, Erik_. 

He isn't, though, is he? Not in the way Erik wants him to be.

You can be with someone, Erik discovers, and still feel more alone than you ever have in your life.

He's not going to run from this, because he's not a coward, and they're here for a reason. But it's still a torment, not lessened as he'd thought it would be by their changed sleeping arrangements. He can _feel_ the metal springs in Charles's mattress shift at night, as Charles tosses and turns on the other side of the thin partition wall, and he wants to go in there and, and –

 _And what?_ he jeers at himself. _Give him another reason to despise you?_

No, Charles doesn't despise people, does he? He's just very, very disappointed in them. Erik winces.

He knows he shouldn't have said what he did to Charles. But this coldness between them burns him, like ice gripped in his bare hands.

All this trouble for a drugged-up runaway who doesn't care about anyone but himself. A fake who battens on people's credulity, their need for love...

Erik's gut clenches: it feels as if there's something alive in there, something alien, knotted and twisting.

 _Love_. Is that what this is?

 _Why don't you go and ask the guru?_ the jeering voice in his head says. He quickens his pace, breaks into a run, till he's panting, blood drumming in his ears, trying to drown out that bitter self-contempt. Trying to blot out the word he shouldn't even have let himself think.

There's no place for sentiment here. Not when they're raising an army to fight the humans. 

Charles doesn't think of it like that, but Erik knows that's what it'll come to. And you can't afford to let yourself be weakened by emotion when you're preparing to go into battle.

Isn't that what's happened to him with Anne, though? He doesn't understand it himself, though he knows it's linked somehow with his mother.

 _Oh, you want to be her little boy now, do you?_ the voice says.

Erik doubles up, panting, pressing his hand to the stitch in his side. He's dripping with sweat. Just as well he's nearly at Hudson Villa, because he really needs a shower now.

An image comes back to him, sharp and unbidden: the mother in the airport in Argentina, crouching down to stroke her child's face. Time stood still, and the throng of travellers around them blurred, till there was nothing but the two figures, caught in a moment of mundane tenderness, and himself, outside, watching. 

He shakes his head, as if the movement could dislodge the memory, stop it constricting his throat. His eyes are stinging with sweat; he scrubs at them with the back of his hand. _Enough now_. He stands in the street outside the lodging-house, willing himself to think of nothing, till his breathing calms and his racing heart returns to normal.

The house is quiet as he lets himself in, and he's about to go upstairs when he stops dead, staring at the phone on the wall as if he's seeing it for the first time. 

No room for sentiment, he reminds himself harshly, but what he sees is Anne leaning against the wall outside the bar, her hands shaking as she tries to light her cigarette. Saying _I always knew he was different_... He feels that surge of anger again, with Charles, with himself, with the fucked-up world they're living in where acceptance is so rare that it makes your heart hurt when you find it. 

Her number's still in his pocket, on that folded piece of paper Charles gave him, that last morning on the train, _not thinking about that_ – Fuck it.

He dials the number, drops the coins in the slot.

“Hello?” She sounds ragged, as if she hasn't slept.

“Anne,” he says, “it's Erik. Have you got something to write with?”

He can hear that she's crying but he goes on reading the address and the directions, checks that she's got it all down correctly.

“I have to go,” he says, and it's true. He can't stay on the phone with this crying woman another minute. 

He hangs up, breathing hard as if he's run another uphill race. Then he goes upstairs to the bathroom and stands in the scalding heat of the shower, his teeth chattering, until the water runs cold and the landlady pounds on the door (“Are you all right, dear? You haven't fainted, have you?”). He towels himself roughly dry and pulls his trousers on, too exhausted to struggle with his shirt. Muttering an apology, he staggers into the bedroom and falls in a heap on the bed. The broken nights, on the journey and since, come down on him like a cosh, and he plummets into sleep.

*~*~*~*

He thinks he's still dreaming at first, though he can't remember any dreams. But waking up and seeing Charles sitting on the hard wooden chair by the window feels unreal. The details of the room are almost too clear for reality: the faded rag rug, the flowers painted round the edge of the mirror over the washstand, the patch of sunlight on the wall that tells him it's afternoon. The feel of the thin counterpane under his fingers. He pours himself a glass of water from the carafe on the bedside table and drinks thirstily, then flops back down onto the bed.

“Hello,” Charles says. He sounds uncharacteristically shy. Maybe this _is_ a dream.

“Hello,” Erik says blearily.

He rubs his eyes. No, Charles is still there.

“What happened with the guru?” he asks, because he can't think what else to say.

“He's still saying no,” Charles says, “but he's thinking about it. He wants us to meet him later. At the Black Cat Cafe.”

“Us?” He can't think why the guru would want him to be there as well. Unless it's some kind of power trip.

“Us,” Charles says, firmly.

The irony of that _us_ , when they're so divided, makes Erik's throat feel tight.

“You will come, won't you?” Charles insists. He seems weirdly tense about it: why should it matter that much whether Erik's there or not?

“Oh, all right,” Erik says, knowing he sounds like a sulky teenager and hating himself for it. “If that's what you want.” 

“What I _want_ ,” Charles says slowly. “If you knew–”

The shock of it hits Erik like the shock of Charles's voice in his head, that first night in the ocean. There's no sound this time, but an image so vivid it takes his breath away: Charles kneeling before him, mouth stretched wide as it can go, sucking Erik's cock. It's not just an image: he can _feel_ what Charles is feeling, the strain of his jaw and tongue, the prickle of sweat dripping into his eyes, the frantic pleasure as Charles fucks into his own fist, his thoughts a litany of _now_ and _want_ and _god, Erik_.

 _That's_ what Charles wants?

“Amongst other things,” Charles says, with a shaky laugh. He's not looking at Erik.

This can't really be happening, can it? Erik will wake up in a minute. His heart is thumping and he's struggling to remember how to breathe, because this, this is... there aren't the _words_ for how much he wants this. 

Charles still doesn't look at him, and Erik knows he needs to say something, quickly – he can sense Charles's panic as the silence stretches out between them. All the words he ever knew seem to have deserted him, except one:

“Please.”

Charles does look at him then, as if he can't believe Erik just said that. His face and neck are flushed, and Erik's sure the blush goes lower still.

“Take your shirt off,” Erik says hoarsely.

Charles shoots him another wild incredulous look, but does as he's told – and yes, Erik was right about the blush, it's half-way down his chest. He watches as Charles drapes his shirt carefully over the back of the chair. _Always so neat, aren't you?_. He wants to rumple that tidy exterior, to turn Charles into a tumbled sweating _mess_. 

Charles catches his breath, as if he's reading Erik's mind.

 _Are you?_ Erik asks him silently.

“You're – very loud,” Charles says apologetically. “I wasn't trying to–”

“It's OK,” Erik says, and it is, though he'd never have thought he'd say that. “I want you to – I _want_ you.”

Charles is still staring at him as if he can't believe what's happening. If he won't take his word for it, Erik will just have to show him, won't he?

Erik drops one hand to his waist, and slowly undoes his trousers. Charles's eyes widen still further. Erik raises his hips and frees himself from his clothes, pushing them off the bed onto the floor.

Charles swallows hard.

“Your turn,” Erik says, sounding calmer than he feels.

Charles bends down to unlace his shoes, takes off his shoes and socks, then straightens up to unfasten his trousers. His hands are clumsy and Erik can't resist giving him a little assistance, making Charles's zip slide down of its own accord. Charles gives another shaky laugh. He unbuckles his belt, finally, and undoes the button that's keeping his trousers in place, then stands up and lets his trousers drop to the floor, stepping out of them and his undershorts to stand in front of Erik. Almost close enough to touch, but not quite. He looks shy but determined and he's the most beautiful thing Erik has ever seen.

“Erik!” Charles protests.

 _I mean it_ , Erik sends him. Aloud he says “Come here.”

Charles kneels over him, maddeningly close, and Erik pulls him down, both of them gasping at the sensation of skin on skin, Charles's thigh between Erik's thighs, his cock pressing against Erik's belly. Erik grips his shoulders and thrusts up against him, making Charles moan.

“Want you,” Charles says, “let me, please let me–”

He kisses Erik's throat and his chest and stomach, hot desperate kisses, as if he wants to devour him. Erik gets a flash of what he looks like to Charles, an image bathed in a glow of love and desire so strong he can hardly look at it. He wonders if this is how Charles has always seen him, and then Charles's mouth is on him and he can't think of anything any more.

There's nothing in the world but this wet perfect heat, Charles's lips enveloping the head of his cock, Charles's tongue caressing and teasing, swirling around that sensitive spot just below the head that makes Erik buck his hips in spite of himself.

“Sorry!” he gasps, and feels Charles laughing silently around his cock. Charles's arm is hard across his pelvis, pinning him to the bed – stronger than he looks, Erik thinks dizzily – and Charles's hand is wrapped around the base of Erik's cock as he sucks and groans with pleasure, sounding close to orgasm himself. It's too much, too good, and Erik's not going to last – the feel of Charles's lips and tongue, the agonizingly perfect pressure of that hot wet suction, the sound of Charles's own helpless pleasure and the _sight_ of him, that impossibly beautiful mouth wrapped around Erik's cock, Charles flushed and sweating and desperate to take more of him, _all_ of him...

“Can't,” Erik gasps, “Charles, if you don't – I'm–”

He feels the surge of _yes now please yes want you to_ from Charles's mind to his own, and he can't stop himself, he's coming and coming and coming, turned inside out by it, crying out as he spills into Charles's mouth, his hands clutching, tangling in Charles's hair. It feels like more than an orgasm, Charles's pleasure reverberating through his own, vibration after vibration, like the striking of a gong.

Charles swallows and licks as if he can't bear to let a single drop escape him, groaning with pleasure. Erik reaches for Charles's cock, closing his fingers around it, and Charles fucks helplessly into his fist, once, twice, and he's coming too, with a long shuddering cry, over Erik's hand and his stomach.

Erik licks his fingers clean, looking straight at Charles. Charles closes his eyes, as if it's too much, then slides his hand around the back of Erik's neck and hauls him in for a deep kiss.

 _Taste yourself_ , he tells Erik, _you're gorgeous_.

 _You too_ , Erik sends him, dizzy at the thought of the mixture they make.

 _Wanted you so much_ , Charles says in his mind, _so much, and I couldn't tell you_.

Erik kisses him harder, wrapping Charles more tightly in his arms. He can feel the aftershocks still going off in him, like the last stray explosions after a big firework display.

Charles snorts with laughter and strokes the backs of Erik's thighs, making him squirm at the light teasing touch on his oversensitive flesh. The mischievous glint in Charles's eyes at that makes Erik say “Don't you dare tickle me!”

“Wouldn't dream of it,” Charles says, all mock innocence.

 _Huh_. Erik grips Charles's wrists and forces him flat on his back, pinning him to the bed. He doesn't trust Charles, not with that look in his eye.

Charles laughs and struggles underneath him, hooking one leg around the back of Erik's calf and sliding his toes up and down it, making him yelp and curse and press Charles down harder into the mattress.

“Oh, you want to wrestle, do you?” Erik growls. He nips Charles's collarbone and sucks at his neck, making him moan and writhe and buck his hips. Erik presses down again, pushing his thigh between Charles's. He's still pinning Charles's wrists above his head and he leans down to nuzzle the tender skin by Charles's armpits, enjoying his near-squeak of protest. Obviously Erik's not the only one who's ticklish.

Charles makes an unexpected movement of his hips and shoulders and the next thing Erik knows _he's_ the one who's flat on his back and pinned to the mattress, with Charles straddling him, flushed and gloating. Charles bends to kiss him, laughing, and Erik kisses him back, light and teasing, pressing his tongue a little way into Charles's mouth and then drawing back when Charles starts to moan with pleasure. Charles gives a little _unh_ of frustration and kisses him again, a deeper, hungrier kiss that quickly has Erik wrapping his legs around Charles's and thrusting up against him. He can feel that Charles is hard again, and he's not the only one.

Erik twists and shifts, deliberately rubbing his cock against Charles's, making Charles gasp. He can hardly keep from crying out himself, arching his back, desperate for more of the delicious friction.

“ _Yes_ ,” Charles says fiercely, “god, yes, Erik, oh–”

He rocks against Erik, pressing down and twisting as Erik writhes underneath him, both of them panting and clinging to each other, limbs tangling together, hot and slippery with sweat, Charles's hand wrapped around both their cocks, sliding and squeezing and pulling, more, now, more, _yes_ , like that, _just_ like that – 

He's coming, or Charles is, or they both are, he can't tell the difference. No boundaries between them now, only this flood of pleasure that blots out everything else, body and mind an explosion of colour so bright it dazzles, a force so strong it feels like being hurled into space, beyond flesh and blood and breath and bone, beyond _I_ and _you_...

Erik comes back to himself slowly, heart racing, still gloriously entangled with Charles, aching and sticky and bathed in sweat and more than half-dazed.

“You felt it too?” Charles says. 

It sounds idiotic, but Erik knows what he means. He makes a noise that's supposed to be _Yes_. 

_Is this what sex is like with a telepath?_ he asks Charles.

“Not usually,” Charles says. He sounds stunned.

This probably isn't the moment to start worrying about the landlady, but Erik can't help thinking it's just as well they're leaving soon...

“She's gone out,” Charles says, a bit too casually.

Put it in her mind, obviously. Given the noise they've been making, it's a good thing he did. Though anyone coming into this room hours from now could hardly fail to realize what's been going on. The smell of sex is everywhere, for a start...

“Mmm,” Charles says appreciatively, tightening his arms around Erik. 

“Weren't you saying something about an appointment?” Erik teases him, stroking his back.

“Nnghh,” Charles says, articulately. “Not yet, oh that's nice, ohh...”

“Good,” Erik says, trying not to laugh. “Because you're not getting out of this bed till I've made you come again.”

Charles moans and buries his face in Erik's shoulder, surrendering as Erik's hand drifts lower.

Five o'clock, Erik thinks. They've got _hours_ yet.


	9. You're Nearer

Something very odd seems to have happened to the bedside lamp. Charles squints at it doubtfully, rubs his eyes and looks again at the twisted mass of metal. He pinches himself to make sure. _Ow_. OK, no, he's awake. How on earth...?

Erik, of course. The realization floods Charles's veins with excitement all over again. He knows now that he can't control his own powers in the heat of such an intense orgasm, and it looks as if the same must be true of Erik.

It really happened, then. If he needed confirmation beyond the slight ache he can still feel in his jaw from the stretch of taking Erik as deep in his mouth as he could. He'd never thought of himself as someone with a fetish about cock size, but he might have to revise his ideas on that. 

He thinks about that moment earlier, coming back from the guru's shop keyed up with nerves and anticipation, bracing himself to tell Erik how he felt, and then finding Erik half-naked, asleep and vulnerable and so beautiful. He hadn't known what to do, but couldn't tear himself away, just sat there for what felt like hours, achingly hard at the sight of Erik barefoot and shirtless, lying there exposed to his gaze. And then when Erik had woken up and said he _wanted_ him...

Erik undoing his trousers and pushing off his clothes to lie completely naked as Charles stared and stared, mesmerized. Erik's beautiful hard cock, flushed dark with blood and already glistening at the tip, Erik so aroused and for _him_ , it was impossible, he couldn't believe it, he couldn't move, till Erik said _Your turn_. Fumbling to unfasten his clothes, so excited he could hardly breathe, and then the sensation of Erik _playing_ with him, using his powers to make Charles's zip move... Holding off, even when Erik said _Come here_ , prolonging the giddy anticipation, his mind yammering _he wants me this can't be happening oh god it is_. The glorious shock of Erik's body against his, and the desperate need to touch, to taste, to lick and suck and hear Erik gasp, feel his thighs trembling at the approach of orgasm, his hands pulling Charles's hair, painful good hard _more_ , Charles groaning with pleasure at the salt bitter taste of precome, the musky smell of Erik and the flood of him, swallowing, wanting it all, so frantic with desire that he came almost as soon as Erik touched him.

The memory of it makes Charles feel giddy with exaltation, as if he's weightless, swooping and soaring on currents of warm air.

“Erik,” he says.

Erik makes a sleepy noise against the back of Charles's neck and shifts closer, so close that Charles feels the heat of Erik's body pressed against his own all the way from shoulder to ankle, solid and real and so _good_ that he has to stifle a groan.

As a strategy for focusing his mind on their mission, sex with Erik has been a total disaster. Not that Charles is complaining. He doesn't have the energy, even if he wanted to. But he's not sure his brain is ever going to work properly again. There's no room in his mind for anything except the overwhelming sensations of wanting, getting, _having_. No room for anything but Erik, the dizzying smell of him, the taste of him still on Charles's lips mixed with the salt of his own sweat, the pressure of Erik's body against his, the small sounds of Erik's breathing and the shivery pleasure of Erik's breath stirring the hairs on the back of Charles's neck.

 _Which orgasm was it?_ Charles wonders, looking at the fused and melted lamp. The first one? The second, when they came together, a joining so complete he couldn't tell any longer what was mental and what was physical, couldn't distinguish the reverberations of Erik's orgasm from his own? Or the third time, with Erik thrusting between his slicked thighs, rubbing against Charles's perineum as his hand coaxed the last faint pulses of orgasm from Charles's cock?

Charles moans, thinking about that one, and feels his cock stirring again. He looks at it in disbelief: _You cannot be serious_. He hasn't come four times in one day since he was seventeen.

The third orgasm had been slow, not just because he'd already come twice, but because Erik had taken pleasure in drawing it out, tormenting Charles by bringing him to the edge again and again but not letting him come, stroking and teasing till Charles was beside himself, begging shamelessly for release, _Erik, I can't, I've got to, let me, oh god, please, now, now, please_. The surge of Erik's triumph, a mixture of _yes_ and _now_ and _mine, all mine_ , ringing through his mind so hard Charles could feel it in his body, taking him over the edge as he shook and gasped and cried out and came, overwhelmed by the twin sensations of Erik's strong beautiful hand grasping him with just the right pressure, Erik's cock pressing hard and insistent between his thighs.

“Charles Xavier, Oxford style,” Erik had said, when he could speak again. Charles had never heard him sound so smug.

“I may never get out of bed again,” Charles said weakly.

He could feel Erik's silent laughter against the back of his neck. “That would be a shame.”

The images flooding from Erik's mind into his own made him gasp: Erik sucking him off in the shower, water cascading over them both; Erik bending him over the desk in Platt's office at night, fingering Charles open slowly and fucking him; Charles flat on his back in the lower bunk in the sleeping-car roomette with his legs over Erik's shoulders, biting his fist to keep from crying out as Erik pounded into him...

 _Everywhere_. Erik's voice in his head was thick with lust. 

“You're insatiable,” Charles groaned.

“Insatiable?” Erik murmured in his ear. “Charles, we've hardly started.” 

He nuzzled Charles's ear, licking and biting gently at his earlobe. Charles moaned feebly, too exhausted to respond, still twitching with the shivery aftershocks of pleasure. He could feel Erik's arm flung heavily across him, pulling them both down into sleep.

 _Sleep_ , Charles thinks drowsily. Mmm. Maybe just a few more minutes...

*~*~*~*

“Look at the _time_ ,” Charles groans, pulling away reluctantly from Erik's embrace.

Erik doesn't make a move for his watch or turn his head, but says “Eight o'clock.” He's _feeling_ the watch hands, Charles realizes with a jolt of excitement. It's the first time Charles has been to bed with anyone who has that sort of power, and the pleasure of each new discovery makes him dizzy.

“We have to get up,” Charles says helplessly. “We're late already.” 

“So you said,” Erik teases him. “An hour ago, wasn't it?”

It was. They'd got as far as the shower that time, but then Erik had started messing around with the shower hose and Charles had got distracted and they'd ended up staggering back to bed, unable to keep their hands off each other.

He should say something stern and reproachful, but Erik looks so happy it takes his breath away. Charles doesn't think he's ever seen him beaming like that before.

“What?” Erik asks.

Charles realizes he must be staring again. 

“You–” he says. There's this strange feeling in his chest, a sort of yearning that tugs at him, making him want to say things to Erik that he never expected to say to anyone: _You're beautiful. I love you. Stay with me always._

Things people say in the afterglow of sex, when their brains are clouded with hormones. Erik would laugh at him if he knew.

 _Pull yourself together, Charles Xavier._

“Seriously, we ought to get going,” he says, levering himself out of bed. 

This time he means it: they're already late for their rendezvous, and the guru will be wondering where they've got to. 

His resolve crumbles when he feels Erik standing behind him and pressing insinuatingly against his back, his lips hot against the nape of Charles's neck; he slides his arms around Charles's waist, and blows gently in his ear. Charles groans helplessly and turns in Erik's embrace for a kiss.

The feel of Erik's mouth against his, the heat of Erik in his arms, the _smell_ of him, of them both, god, how is he supposed to tear himself away from this? Sod the recruiting, he's staying right here in San Francisco and never leaving this room again...

Erik's kiss is light and teasing at first, and then not teasing at all. He goes on kissing Charles until they're both breathless and then lets go suddenly, leaving Charles half-hard again, pulse racing.

“OK,” Erik says. “You're right, we should get going. We're terribly late already.”

“You are actually trying to drive me insane, aren't you?” Charles says. “Stop laughing, Erik, it's not funny!”

“Mm,” Erik says. “Cold shower for you, I think, and I'd better not join you this time.”

“I swear,” Charles says vengefully, “when we've got what we came for, I will... ”

But at the look on Erik's face, words fail him. It's as much as he can do to keep from tackling Erik to the bed and starting all over again. As Erik very well knows.

“Whatever it is, I'll look forward to it,” Erik says, with a wicked grin that makes Charles go weak at the knees.


	10. A Good Man Nowadays Is Hard To Find

The Black Cat Cafe is full to bursting, so it's hard to tell if John the guru is here or not. The clientele is an odd assortment of leather-clad bikers, slightly uncomfortable-looking business types, peacocking dandies in brightly coloured shirts, beatniks, and a few obvious tourists looking slightly lost. 

Charles secures them the last vacant table, and Erik goes to the bar to get the drinks.

“Hey, daddy-o!”

He almost doesn't recognize the beatnik boy from Vesuvio, who's now sporting a close-fitting black turtleneck rather than the outsize sweater he was wearing yesterday. 

“Hey,” Erik says back. He orders Scotch for Charles and a Gibson for himself, remembering that night in the observation car when they met Anne Catterall. It seems a long time ago now.

“Guess you found what you were looking for after all,” the boy says, gesturing in the direction of Charles.

“Oh,” Erik says, catching up belatedly. “That was you, was it?” He'd almost forgotten about the flyer with the note scrawled on it. So much has happened since then.

“Yeah, that was me,” the boy says ruefully. 

“Were you at the concert?” Erik asks. He can't remember noticing the kid there, but he'd been distracted by all that drama with Anne.

The boy shakes his head. “I ran into a cat I know who just got back from Mexico. He had some good stuff, real strong... Next thing I knew it was this morning.”

Erik's not sure whether the boy's complaining or boasting. It doesn't seem worth the trouble of finding out.

“Anyway,” the boy says, “looks like you two finally got it together.”

It probably is pretty obvious, Erik thinks. They'd been careful not to touch on the way here, but once they were inside... He can still feel the ghost of Charles's touch, his hand squeezing Erik's shoulder and sliding down to the small of his back, intimate and possessive. 

“Yes, we did,” Erik says, and grins. “Finally.”

Charles looks round to see where Erik's got to, and raises an eyebrow. Erik lifts his glass in a toast, and sees Charles flush faintly.

“Hey, that's cool,” the boy says. “Enjoy the show, man.”

“Thanks,” Erik says. “You too.”

He weaves his way between the crowded tables and sits down, pressing his knee against Charles's under the table.

“That's the boy from Vesuvio,” Charles says.

Erik quite likes that jealous note in Charles's voice, but he's not going to push his luck. 

“Yes,” he says. “He's the one who put the flyer in my pocket, apparently. He got stoned and never made it to the concert.”

“Huh,” Charles says, a bit sulkily.

“He wouldn't have stood a chance anyway,” Erik says. He presses his leg harder against Charles's and sings, in his best imitation of Frank Sinatra, “'Cause I only have eyes for you.”

“Don't give up the day job,” Charles says, clearly struggling not to laugh. “Honestly, Erik, you're impossible.”

“I thought you'd just disproved that,” Erik teases him. “Repeatedly, in fact.”

Charles goes a bit pink again, but whatever he was going to say is lost as the piano strikes up and an extraordinary figure swishes into the spotlight. 

“Hello, hello everybody!  
I'm glad to see you are here,  
To sing and dance and entertain you  
And bring you lots of cheer.”

The Black Cat Cafe's famous drag act has begun. Jose Sarria, the Nightingale of Montgomery Street, elaborately gowned, wearing high-heeled shoes and a luxuriant blonde wig, huge dangling earrings and glittering chunky bracelets, and fluttering an enormous fan. 

Erik downs his Gibson rather too quickly and escapes to the bar to fetch reinforcements. He's definitely not going to make it through the rest of this evening sober, and he's glad that the Black Cat's barman makes his cocktails strong.

In fact, the act is much better than Erik thought it would be, though the drag queen's banter with the audience still makes him uncomfortable. It seems as if almost everyone here must be queer – or _gay_ , as Sarria keeps saying. Erik's never been in a room with so many homosexuals in his life; and being here now, when his body's still aching deliciously from sex with Charles and his head is full of those vivid images, is a very strange experience.

“Is this your friend?” the drag queen asks one half of a tourist couple. “Where did you meet him? San Francisco! True love found at the YMCA...”

He wonders what would happen if Sarria asked him and Charles where they met: _We met in the ocean off Florida when I was trying to raise a submarine and he was trying to stop me._

It doesn't matter where you find love, though, does it? The important thing is that you find it, and hang on to it. 

“Where are you from?” Sarria quizzes the couple at the next table. “New York! And you? New York too! Roommates? Don't blush, darling, we all have our problems. Well, for better or worse you're stuck with him.”

For better or worse: he likes the thought of that with Charles, more than he should.

It's time for another song, and this one feels almost too appropriate: “You kiss him in the morning, hug him every noon, And don't say no to him, or I will do him soon, A good man nowadays is hard to find.”

Erik lets his hand rest on Charles's thigh under the table, and feels the wash of Charles's pleasure at the touch. Their boundaries are still blurred, from all that physical closeness as well as from the extraordinary mental intimacy. Charles squeezes Erik's hand and rubs his thumb over Erik's knuckles.

Sarria has spotted them, inevitably, and now of course they're going to be hauled into the act. Erik half expects Charles to do something to prevent it, use his powers somehow, but he's just sitting there with a foolish grin on his face, apparently quite content to become the drag queen's latest victim.

“Where have you come from?” Sarria asks Erik.

“Europe,” Erik mutters, feeling awkward.

“Europe!” Jose Sarria exclaims excitedly. “Whereabouts in Europe?”

What is he supposed to say to that? Germany? Auschwitz? 

“Switzerland,” he says. Well, Geneva was the last time he was in Europe...

“Switzerland!” Sarria says. “My aunt's _fourth_ husband came from Switzerland. And he could parler français comme ci comme ça, you know? Do you speak French?”

Erik nods.

“So romantic! The language of love... Ah, l'amour. And is this your friend? You're looking very gay today, my dear,” Sarria says, turning to Charles. “Where are you from?”

“Westchester, New York,” Charles says. 

Erik's never thought about where Charles is from – he thinks of him as from Oxford, though he knows that's not true. Westchester is unexpected.

“Westchester, New York!” Jose Sarria exclaims. He winks at the audience. “Well! There must be at least one queen in Westchester, New York, that's all I'm saying.”

The audience laughs good-naturedly, and Charles laughs too. 

“I won't tell if you won't,” he says, at which the drag queen cackles and pokes him in the ribs with that ridiculous fan, saying “Oh, your reputation was shot to hell the minute you came in here.”

Charles just goes on grinning, unabashed. Erik would never have expected to see him so relaxed in this kind of setting.

 _It's your fault_ , Charles says in his head, sounding so pleased with himself that he's practically purring. He was probably a cat in another life, Erik thinks, imagining Charles curled up on the bed lazily washing himself and stretching with pleasure. Charles could take a lot of petting. Unlimited amounts, judging by this afternoon...

 _Erik!_ Charles protests, colour rising up to the tips of his ears. 

_What?_ Erik sends him. _Don't you want me to stroke you? I thought you liked it._

 _Stop it!_ Charles tells him. He's shifting in his seat and crossing his legs.

The desire to go on teasing Charles, to make him blush and squirm and long to be back in bed with Erik, is almost irresistible. And it's not as if it's just teasing – Erik's mind is running on what he'd like to do to Charles anyway. He thinks of Charles naked and flushed and sprawled across the lodging-house bed as Erik kisses and licks him all over, trails his fingers over Charles's nipples and down to his thighs...

The sound Charles makes in his head is almost a whimper, though he joins in the applause for Sarria's act as if nothing's going on, outwardly serene as always. But he gives Erik a look, and the next moment it feels as if someone's tipped a bucket of ice over Erik's crotch. Erik bites back a gasp and Charles grins at him.

 _Now you know how I felt on the train_ , Charles says in his head.

He winks at Erik, which is very unfair, and then disappears in the direction of the men's room.

Erik's just wondering whether to follow him when a woman's voice says “I thought you weren't coming.” He turns around and sees Felicia Cesario.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. She's not the only woman in the room, but it still seems an odd place for her to turn up.

“I come here all the time. Why shouldn't I?” she says, prickly as ever. “The Black Cat is my family. They took me in when I was homeless, fed me when I was broke, gave me a shoulder to cry on when I was hurting from a love-affair. Anyway, John asked me to come.”

“Is he here?” Erik asks, though he thinks he knows the answer.

She shakes her head. “He took off,” she says. “With his mother.”

So Anne had found him. Erik wonders what that meeting was like, how much each had to forgive.

“They haven't gone back to Denver, have they?” he asks.

“What do you think?” Felicia says scornfully. “No, they're going travelling. His mother's sick – that's what she says, anyway – and he wants to be with her while he can.”

“You'll miss him,” Erik says, though it's hardly his concern.

“Maybe,” Felicia says. “I'll be travelling myself. Going to Europe. See some new places, learn some new songs.”

Erik imagines her hitching with a bundle of clothes and her guitar, playing and singing in bars for food and lodging; meeting others like her, the restless drifting young ones, full of hope and anger.

“Good luck,” he says.

“Thanks.” She fishes in the pocket of her slacks and says “She said to give you this.”

 _Dear Erik_ , the note reads. _By the time you get this we'll be gone; I'd rather not say where. I couldn't bear to lose John again, not when there's so little time left. Tell Charles I'm sorry. I'll never forget your kindness. Thank you for giving me back my son. Anne._

Charles doesn't look surprised when Erik shows it to him. 

“Let's go,” he says. “There's nothing to stay for here.”

*~*~*~*

It's dark outside now, and raining. Erik lights a cigarette and inhales deeply.

The cooler air hitting his skin makes him realize he's had too many of the barman's fierce cocktails. Between that and the exhilaration of being with Charles, he's positively giddy. He feels like turning cartwheels or dancing in the rain.

“You're wearing the green shirt,” Charles says, as if he's only just noticed.

“Mm,” Erik says. 

He likes feeling it against his skin, thinking of Charles wearing it, that first afternoon that seems longer than two days ago. If he tries very hard he can catch a faint scent he thinks of as Charles's, like the scent of his hair on the pillow, those nights on the train. He remembers pressing his face into the pillow, twisting his hips against the mattress and imagining Charles naked in his arms.

The street lights aren't bright enough to show it, but he thinks Charles might be blushing again. Erik could spend hours coming up with new ways to make Charles blush, and he's looking forward to doing exactly that, first chance he gets.

Charles clears his throat. “So, how are we going to do the journey back?”

No need for mind-reading; it's obvious what he's thinking.

“We could always hire a car,” Erik says.

The train would be a different kind of torment now. He imagines them trying to keep quiet in one of the narrow bunks, imagines Charles having to wipe minds all the way up and down the sleeping-car when they fail...

Charles is definitely blushing now. “Driving, yes. Why not?”

Same problem in motels, though, Erik thinks, and the beds aren't much better. Though they could always try to find a quiet spot off the road if they can't wait any longer...

 _In the back seat, Erik, really?_ Charles's voice in his head is amused.

Cramped, awkward, dangerous... and _yes_. Yes, he wants that, the way he wants Charles desperately biting his fist to keep from crying out, the way he wants to feel the rhythm of the train shuddering through and against the rhythm they make together. Wants the anonymous motels with their cheap mattresses and thin walls, the diners where they sit across a table and look impossible things at each other. 

“Mmm,” Charles says, sliding his arms around Erik's waist and pressing against him. He moves his hips teasingly against Erik's, and Erik pulls him closer, till there's no space between their bodies.

“What's that in your pocket?” Charles asks, sounding surprised.

 _I'm just pleased to see you, you idiot_ , Erik thinks, and grins.

“Not that,” Charles says, laughing. “Your shirt pocket!”

Erik fishes it out: a strange-looking pen, white plastic with a red cap. How did that get there? He must have picked it up in the guru's shop and carried it off by mistake when he stormed out of the place.

“Shoplifting,” Charles says, pretending to be shocked.

“I don't suppose he'll miss it,” Erik says. “Wherever he's gone.”

“No, probably not,” Charles says. 

He sounds distracted, and Erik wonders for a moment if Charles is angry with him for giving Anne the address. Charles doesn't _look_ angry, though – his eyes are shining and he's looking at Erik as if he's the most precious thing he's ever seen.

Any minute now Erik is going to kiss the breath out of this man and to hell with whoever happens to be passing. But there's something he wants to do first, something he didn't know he wanted to do till now. He uncaps the pen and begins to trace the words on Charles's face.

“Erik, what are you doing?” Charles protests, gripping his forearm.

“Can't you guess?” Erik teases him.

“Writing _Property of Erik Lehnsherr_ ,” Charles suggests.

The thought of that makes heat pool in Erik's stomach, but he shakes his head and says “Try again.”

“ _Beware of the telepath_?” Charles jokes.

“No,” Erik says. “One more guess.”

“I can't,” Charles says. He sounds vulnerable and unsure of himself, almost as if he _has_ guessed, but is afraid he's guessed wrong.

 _See for yourself, then_ , Erik invites him. The sensation as Charles's mind pushes into his is still unfamiliar, and strangely arousing. There's almost a kind of _flutter_ in it, eager and shy. 

He feels the shock of Charles's pleasure and tenderness as he sees his own face through Erik's eyes, sees the words Erik's traced on it, still legible though the ink's starting to blur in the rain: _Je t'aime_.

“In French?” Charles asks, sounding rather breathless.

 _The language of love_ , Sarria said, but that's not why. He wants the intimacy of _du_ , the closeness that's not there in English, because who says _thou_ or _thee_ any more? But he hasn't spoken German to anyone he loved since his mother died, and he's not sure he could do it now.

“Not my language, not yours,” Erik says. “But one we share.”

The pen and the cigarette tumble into the gutter as Charles pulls his head down for a kiss, slow and tender and so insinuating that it makes Erik feel dizzy. Tomorrow it will all begin again, he knows: the search for other mutants, his own quest for Shaw. But tonight is theirs, and nothing matters but this – Charles in his arms, kissing him without question, without shame. They stand there, kissing in the rain, caught out of time as the world goes on around them, till the singing of the wires and the hum of millions of minds fade away into the city and the night.

**Author's Note:**

> The image of Erik in drag appears in one of the deleted scenes from _X-Men: First Class_. Its effect on Charles may have been inspired by the Magnetic Fields' song Andrew In Drag and its (NSFW) [video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf_l3EGQvL8).
> 
> Erik's encounter with the glamorous blonde was inspired partly by Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 film _North By Northwest_ , in which Eva Marie Saint vamps Cary Grant on the train from New York to Chicago.
> 
> “Foggy Day” and “You're Nearer” come from Judy Garland's album _Judy at Carnegie Hall_ , which won the 1962 Grammy award for Album of the Year. Both songs can be heard [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et36f-zjI60).
> 
> For more on the San Francisco locations of Hitchcock's 1958 film _Vertigo_ , see [here](http://www.movie-locations.com/movies/v/vertigo_1.html).
> 
> Stubborn Kind of Fellow was a hit single in 1962 for [Marvin Gaye](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDWK5IANPWo).
> 
> [The Sky Tram](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ixAm6GfHdI) no longer exists and the [automata and mechanical toys](http://www.cliffhouse.com/history/mechanical_museum.html) are now in a separate museum.
> 
> Can't Judge A Book By The Cover was recorded in 1962 by [Bo Diddley](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lch0o4wwGyw).
> 
> [Vesuvio](http://www.vesuvio.com/), a famous Beat hangout, is still going, as is [City Lights](http://www.citylights.com/bookstore/) bookstore. Allen Ginsberg's 1956 volume [_Howl_](http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100465920) became the subject of an obscenity trial in 1957 because of its explicit references to homosexuality.
> 
> Runaway was recorded in 1961 by [Dell Shannon](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S13mP_pfEc).
> 
> The character of Felicia Cesario is extremely loosely based on a real-life folk singer from California, [Julie Felix](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2ffhgloyI4&feature=plcp) (seen here in a rare Belgian TV recording) - they look alike and sing the same sort of songs, but any resemblance ends there. 
> 
> Cupid was recorded in 1961 by [Sam Cooke](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F48yOkcQWe0).
> 
> Some elements of the guru's story are very loosely based on the 1955 film _Rebel Without A Cause_.
> 
> You Can Run (But You Can't Hide) was recorded in 1962 by [Jerry Butler](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlKDclJR7aQ).
> 
> Erik's memory of the airport in Argentina is based on another of the deleted scenes from _X-Men: First Class_.
> 
> Unlike Felicia Cesario, Jose Sarria is a real historical figure. Most of the dialogue and the songs from Sarria's drag routine is quoted from the album _No Camping_ , which I was delighted to discover uploaded [here](http://www.queermusicheritage.us/drag-sarria.html). 
> 
> For more on Sarria and the Black Cat Cafe, see Greta Schiller's film [_Before Stonewall_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5vCmP_ZoTU). Felicia's tribute to the Black Cat community echoes one of the speeches made at the Black Cat Cafe reunion, as seen in Schiller's documentary.
> 
> One version of Frank Sinatra singing "I Only Have Eyes For You" can be found [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iyYVq_G-QQ</a).
> 
> The scene in which Erik writes on Charles's face was inspired by an image from Michael Fassbender's [Vogue](http://www.vogue.com/magazine/article/modern-times-michael-fassbender-and-natalia-vodianova/#1) photoshoot with Natalia Vodianova, photographed by Craig McDean. Making it happen on a rainy night was hazelnut917's brilliant idea - my thanks to her for all she did to shape this fic from beginning to end!


End file.
